The long struggle of the first half of the eighteenth century was not merely on the question of a medium to serve for gravific mechanism, but on the correctness of the Newtonian law of gravitation as a matter of fact, however explained. The corresponding controversy in the nineteenth century was very short, and it soon became obvious that Faraday’s idea of the transmission of electric force by a medium not only did not violate Coulomb’s law of relation between force and distance, but that, if real, it must give a thorough explanation of that law. Nevertheless, after Faraday’s discovery of the different specific inductive capacities of different insulators, twenty years passed before it was generally accepted in Continental Europe. But before his death, in 1867, he had succeeded in inspiring the rising generation of the scientific world with something approaching to faith that electric force is transmitted by a medium called ether, of which, as had been believed by the whole scientific world for forty years, light and radiant heat are transverse vibrations. Faraday himself did not rest with this theory of electricity alone. The very last time I saw him at work at the Royal Institution was in an underground cellar, which he had chosen for freedom from disturbance, and he was arranging experiments to test the time of propagation of magnetic force from an electromagnet through a distance of many yards of air to a fine steel needle, polished to reflect light; but no result came from those experiments. About the same time, or soon after, certainly not long before the end of his working time, he was engaged (I believe at the Shot Tower, near Waterloo Bridge, on the Surrey side) in efforts to discover relations between gravity and magnetism, which also led to no result.
KELVIN’S APPRECIATION.
Lord Kelvin, who was himself the first to perceive that Faraday’s ideas were not inconsistent with mathematical expression, and to direct Clerk Maxwell and others to this view, had, in 1854, delighted the old man by bringing mathematical support to the conception of lines of force. In 1857 he sent to Faraday a copy of one of his papers, and received in acknowledgment a letter of warm encouragement, which, however, does not appear to have been preserved. Lord Kelvin’s reply is its own best commentary:—
Such expressions from you would be more than a sufficient reward for anything I could ever contemplate doing in science. I feel strongly how little I have done to deserve them, but they will encourage me with a stronger motive than I have ever had before to go on endeavouring to see in the direction you have pointed, which I long ago learned to believe is the direction in which we must look for a deeper insight into nature.
CHAPTER VIII
RELIGIOUS VIEWS.
The name of Glasites or Sandemanians is given to a small sect of Christians which separated from the Scottish Presbyterian Church about 1730 under the leadership of the Rev. John Glas. Most of the congregations which sprang up in England were formed in consequence of the dissemination of the writings and by the preaching of Robert Sandeman, son-in-law and successor of Glas. Hence the double name. The Sandemanian Church in London was constituted about 1760. It still has a chapel in Barnsbury, though the sect as a whole—never numerous—has dwindled to a small remnant.[58] The religious census of 1851 showed but six congregations in England and six in Scotland. As it never was a proselytising body, it is probable that it has diminished since that date. John Glas was deposed in 1728 by the Presbyterian Courts from his position as minister in the Scottish Church, because he taught that the Church should be governed only by the doctrines of Christ and His apostles, and not be subject to any League or Covenant. He held that the formal establishment by any nation of a professed religion was the subversion of primitive Christianity; that Christ did not come to establish any worldly authority, but to give a hope of eternal life to His people whom He should choose of His own sovereign will; that “the Bible,” and it alone, with nothing added to it nor taken away from it by man, was the sole and sufficient guide for each individual, at all times and in all circumstances; that faith in the divinity and work of Christ is the gift of God, and that the evidence of this faith is obedience to the commandment of Christ.
THE SANDEMANIAN CREED.
The tenets of Glas are somewhat obscure and couched in mystical language. They prescribe a spiritual union which binds its members into one body as a Church without its being represented by any corresponding outward ecclesiastical polity. He died in 1773. Sandeman, who spent most of his life in preaching these doctrines, died about the same time in New England. He caused to be inscribed on his tomb that “he boldly contended for the ancient faith that the bare death of Jesus Christ, without a deed or thought on the part of man, is sufficient to present the chief of sinners spotless before God.”
A PRIMITIVE CHURCH.